GCpedia

GCpedia is an internal wiki used by the Government of Canada, for collaboration and knowledge sharing. Its slogan is “People & Knowledge“. GCpedia is only accessible via the Government of Canada network and contributors must be on a computer on a government (.gc.ca) network to be able to access it. The user base is potentially 250,000 people, from over 150 departments and agencies. Users must be registered if they wish to add or modify content, so that all contributions are attributable.[1] GCpedia has been used as a platform to take, publish, and distribute meeting minutes, to create project status dashboards, to collaboratively author interdepartmental papers, to brainstorm, and to create wiki-based briefing books.

GCpedia was formally launched as a government-wide pilot by Ken Cochrane, former Chief Information Officer for Canada, at the annual Government Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC) in Ottawa, Canada on October 28, 2008.[2][3]

The Government of Canada's internal Web 2.0 environment currently comprises three collaborative tools, collectively referred to as the GC2.0 Tools, which were developed and are operated by the Treasury Board Secretariat for use amongst Government of Canada employees:

All three tools are run on open source software and are accessible and available to all employees in the Government of Canada who have access to SCNet, the central Government of Canada network and are not available externally. They are the only internal collaborative tools freely available to all Government of Canada employees.

According to the August 2009 content review, government of Canada public servants were using GCpedia primarily to share information and gather project/performance feedback; and build collaborative and interdepartmental communities of practice; establish terms of reference for interdepartmental committees; and as support networks across a wide range of topics.[5]

Canada's CIO, Corinne Charette, said in October 2009 of the success of GCpedia: "Clearly this is a community that is ripe for collaboration".[6]

In March 31, 2010, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Wayne Wouters, officially joined GCpedia with both a personal user page and a page inviting ideas and feedback from government employees.[7]

In April 2010 Wouters stated that deputy heads within the Government of Canada must advance Public Service Renewal in their departments by various means including public servants "experimenting with Web 2.0 technology, including GCpedia".[8]

In a September 2010 article, Marj Akerley is quoted as stating, "As government employees become more comfortable with new technology and seek mechanisms for collaboration, their confidence in the effectiveness of the tools is increasing".[9]

"The federal public service utilizes GCpedia...to facilitate collaboration and the sharing of information." - Maclean's magazine, September 16, 2010[10]

GCpedia is "a key medium for our staff in the regions to learn what's available, what's happening, in the National Capital Region and other regions, and it has helped tear down bureaucratic barriers between departments." - quote from Corinne Charette, CIO of Canada - Ottawa Citizen October 6, 2010[11][12]

"GCpedia has demonstrated that public servants have an interest in sharing information and collecting feedback on their projects."[13]

^"'Tsunami of change' coming in IT". Ottawa Citizen. October 7, 2010. The government's GCpedia project, a Wikipedia-like database for public servants, already has attracted 18,000 contributors and thousands more users.